All Blog Posts (146)

I have been blown away by discovering that Google Earth now runs in a browser and that a lot of the cities are being build in 3D. The program to do so is Google Sketchup and it seems that this kind of crowdsourcing and geomapping are doing an amazing work behind the scenes.

Together with the Dutch partners Utrecht University will present the results of the EU project NIFLAR it coordinated these past 2 years on Friday, February 4. In a number of presentations and activities items such as task design, practice reports, interviews with participating language students and pre-service teachers, the 3D learning environments and research outcomes will be covered. …

How much fun winter activities can be in Second Life! All 24 of us thoroughly enjoyed each others company ice-skating, sledging, sitting around bonfires and talking. Those who stayed longest though, were in… Continue

The development on EduNation is now complete and I am happy to introduce you to the newly refurbished EduNation. About one year ago, Gavin Dudeney announced that he will discontinue EduNation I and III but that he would maintain EduNation II. It has been a long process since then to make sure that what Gavin built, namely a community of educators would continue. The new owners of EduNation I and III are Randall Sadler of the University of Illinois, Paul East of the Pyramid Group and myself,…

This coming Sunday (December 12th) we will be having an open house and holiday party on the EduNation Islands. This will be a great change to meet the current residents of the islands, but all CALICO and EUROCALL SIG members are welcome as well!

This is a change to meet your counterparts from around the world, check out the newly designed islands, and to have some fun! Hope to see you there.

The transfer of ownership of EduNation III Island from Gavin Dudeney (Dudeney Ge in SL) to Randall Sadler (Randall Renoir in SL) has now been completed. Randall is busy right now, 27 October 2010, changing the terrain of the island. All the buildings and contents have been removed, so you won't find the EUROCALL and CALICO HQs in their usual place. But it won't be long before we are up and running again and in new accommodation. Keep an eye on this blog for updates. If you are…

I have not been very active in Second Life for the last few days, and I am not sure how active I will be during the SLanguages 2010 conference. I underwent surgery, an exploratory laparoscopy, on 8 October 2010,…

I'm an English language tutor from New Zealand. I've just started incorporating SL into my language classroom. In order to take full advantage of SL, I'm looking for volunteers who'd be interested in meeting in SL to have a 5-10 min chat with my students in English (as they're learning English), then in Chinese (as the volunteers would be learning Chinese).

I'm not sure if it's feasible at all, and I'm aware of the time zone differences. But I thought I'd start… Continue

SLanguages 2010 is a 24-hour virtual conference on language teaching and learning in Second Life. It will run from 10:00 SL time (5pm GMT), 15 October, 10:00 SL time (5pm GMT), 16 October. Wherever possible, sessions will be repeated to enable people in different time zones to see them. There will also be group discussions and social events and the opportunity to visit an exhibition of SL tools for educators. Further information can be found in the AVALON Ning:…

I got back from EUROCALL 2010 in Bordeaux a couple of days ago. It was a remarkable and memorable conference in every respect. The quality of the presentations was very high, and the social events were excellent. The food and wine at the Gala Dinner were up to the standard that one would expect in Bordeaux, but we also had a lot of fun laughing at ourselves in the post-dinner karaoke session. Many of us did not get back to our hotels before 2.30 in the morning! It was so thoughtful of the…

Well, it's not actually brand new, but it did start just last semester. I am interested in teaching students critical thinking skills at a variety of levels and from a variety of approaches. This year, I became Program Chair of our new Critical Thinking JALT (Japanese Association of Language Teachers) SIG. I am beginning an M.A. in Educational Technologies and TESOL at the University of Manchester from this September 2010. I hope that my interest in teaching critical thinking skills and my… Continue

I would like to thank everyone who attended the meeting on Viewer 2 yesterday evening in the AVALON sim. I know I talked far too much, so thank you for listening so patiently. I hope you found some of the tips useful. I certainly found your feedback useful: what you did not know about Viewer 2, what you like and what you find unfriendly or irritating. I have completely revised my tutorial materials on Viewer 2 to take account of the changes that have been introduced into Version 2.1.0, which…